site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   33575 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

OpenAI Shifts Strategy to Slower, Smarter AI as GPT Scaling Limits Emerge, OpenAI's upcoming Orion model shows how GPT improvements are slowing down

Paywalled, but here's a summary from reddit:

"Some OpenAI employees who tested Orion report it achieved GPT-4-level performance after completing only 20% of its training, but the quality increase was smaller than the leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4, suggesting that traditional scaling improvements may be slowing as high-quality data becomes limited

  • Orion's training involved AI-generated data from previous models like GPT-4 and reasoning models, which may lead it to reproduce some behaviors of older models
  • OpenAI has created a "foundations" team to develop new methods for sustaining improvements as high-quality data supplies decrease
  • Orion's advanced code-writing features could raise operating costs in OpenAI's data centers, and running models like o1, estimated at six times the cost of simpler models, adds financial pressure to further scaling
  • OpenAI is finishing Orion's safety testing for a planned release early next year, which may break from the "GPT" naming convention to reflect changes in model development

“Some researchers at the company believe Orion isn’t reliably better than its predecessor in handling certain tasks, according to the employees. Orion performs better at language tasks but may not outperform previous models at tasks such as coding, according to an OpenAI employee. That could be a problem, as Orion may be more expensive for OpenAI to run in its data centers compared to other models it has recently released, one of those people said.”

This is one of several articles/posts/tweets coming out of the LLMsphere over the past couple of weeks that are renewing concerns over LLMs hitting diminishing returns.

Of course this is just speculation until OpenAI actually releases Orion (or whatever they end up calling it). And really we would need several models past Orion too to actually extrapolate a pattern. But this does fit with my subjective impression that the leap from GPT-3 to GPT-4 was not as big as the leap from GPT-2 to GPT-3, and the leap from 4 to o1 was not as big as the leap from 3 to 4. The fact that they're considering again releasing a new model without calling it GPT-5 is also telling. They know how psychologically important the "GPT-5" moniker has become at this point and they won't give that name to a model unless it really represents a major leap forward.

AI is still limited to text boxes and text manipulation or content generation; it has failed to live up the hype otherwise, like life extension, replacing workers, or treating disease, imho. The point of diminishing returns has been reached. it will take a whole new paradigm for AI to make the next leap. As far as transforming writing papers for college students, yeah, it has totally crushed that, and even then teachers are wising up. [If AI is able to produce a fiction novel that is a best-seller and or critically acclaimed either with text prompts or feeding it samples of other novels, I will be sold]

it has failed to live up the hype otherwise, like life extension, replacing workers, or treating disease, imho.

Tesla is all-in on reinforcement learning for their next generation of Optimus robots, but they only spun that team up this summer. When I heard this news the stock price was at like 180 and I bought some calls for 230/250/270 for next June. After some movement I pushed these up to 300. Yet this still looks way too pessimistic. I think some exposure to $500c by the end of next year might be warranted.

The TSLA call options so expensive though. I like the 2x leveraged TSLA ETF instead. if TSLA doubles the ETF in theory will gain 3.5-4x, maybe offset decay by selling a long-dated ATM put + call

It looks like I was too pessimistic, 500 by the end of THIS year is in play

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats